Thorn looked down at the girl's gold head. Her starlit white face seemed softer now, with a queer yearning in it as she gazed along the dark street. It all seemed strangely dreamlike to the Earthman — he and the pirate girl and the green-eyed, padding space dog walking together under the meteor-blazoned night sky.
Lana Cain looked up at him and asked the question that she had already voiced earlier that evening.
"Why don't you Planeteers stay here with us,” John Thorn? With you to help, my plans could—"
"Your plans?” he repeated, interrupting. “What do you mean, Lana?"
She stopped and looked up at him. “Do you think that being leader of the pirates is all I want? No, that is only a means to an end. I have a dream, the same dream my father had — a dream of making the Zone a place of orderly life and happy cities, instead of just a wild, lawless jungle."
Her words came with an eager rush. “There are hundreds of asteroids in the Zone that are habitable, or could be made habitable. A whole new world, that could be independent and self-sufficient, and could be a refuge for oppressed people from all parts of the system, people fleeing from tyranny and injustice."
Lana's voice throbbed with earnestness. “My father worked with that dream in mind, organized the scattered bands of pirates and made them temper their bloodthirsty ways. I've worked toward that goal, too. And now, when the League of Colorsis about to attack the Inner Alliance, the chance is, coming to make that dream come true. For with interplanetary war going on, we could organize our new world in’ the Zone without interference. And millions of people may want a safe refuge."
Thorn was impressed by the girl's sincerity and breadth of ambition.
"But, Lana, are all the eight worlds as bad as you seem to think?” he said slowly. “It's true the four worlds of the League are crushed under the fanatical tyranny of Haskell Trask, their dictator, but what about Earth and the other three inner worlds? They have no tyranny or oppression."
"They have black injustice that is as bad as tyranny,” answered Lana, her starlit face hardening. “Look at what they did to my father!"